Content
in the Form

The
painting of Ana Maria Plant impresses us primarily because of its suggestive
qualities. This, however, says little of an artist who resolves the most
serious aesthetic proposition in a highly original way.

The
subject is not new, yet it remains unresolved. The fact is that a great many
approaches have been tried over the years – completmentary or contrary as the
case may be – in the attempt to remedy what seems irremediable in the eyes of
artists and critics. I refer to the supposed limitation of the canvas as a
support for artistic expression.

In
the frenetic search for a new formalization of pictorial art, the canvas is now
frequently being blamed for the dead end that the art of painting has now
reached. Faced with this impasse, they don’t hesitate to deny its basic
components in favour of aesthetic presuppositions that range from the arbitrary
to the iconoclastic. All that the prophets of false renewal have to offer is
change for changes sake, to the detriment of the whole.

Luckily
this is not the path taken by Ana Maria. Her own search has proven to be lucid
and consequential. The paintings of her new phase offer a structure in which
windows are the key. Whether they be a frontier line or a point of
intersection, she places herself discretely between the inside and the outside,
the interior and the exterior, between still life and real life.

Such
spaces in opposition (or juxtaposition) are all the more impressive for the
identity of their component parts. Outside we have an eternal recurrence of
mountain ranges etched against the skyline with the proud silhouettes of
ubiquitous araucaria trees. Inside we have silent and scantily furnished rooms
adorned with solitary enamel jugs and simple vases – cold, static objects which
increase the solitude of the empty ancestral home.

It
is difficult to resist the temptation to interpret as the objects on either
side assume a representative, archetypal character. With the component forms
transfigured into polysignificant symbols, we swiftly enter the hypothetical
town versus country, urban versus natural conflict. Perhaps that old cock
roosting on the radio serves to structure the composition.

As
if to avoid becoming the vicitim of her own magic, the artist does not include
her own image. Life penetrates the lonely room in the form of flowers in vases,
the rustic climbing plant, columns of busy ants and colourful butterflies, not
to forget those watchful and enigmatic cats and the cockerel on the radio, as
well as the dark table surface enlivened with apples and bananas on a plate.

Life
is on the outside, and that is where freedom thrives. It is what each of those
symbolic objects seems to reveal - the deciphered message of her formal
project. The joining together of four canvases to create the window itself
reveals this possibility, and more than this possibility, indeed the freedom to
multiply space, canvas after canvas ad infinitum. In other words, objective
freedom arises in response to subjective freedom, a theme subordinate to the
process of revelation.

The
Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa said that “All is worthwhile if the soul is not
vile”. Ana Maria corroborates this in images, not words. With her Windows she
shows that it is possible to make an original and enriching art using the
old-fashioned canvas, brushes and paints. Just add a little creativity!